Lim in Chong won the Best in Show accolade at the 2012 Gardening World Cup in Japan on Friday September 28, an event that Bob Sweet, head of judging for the Royal Horticultural Society and convener of the judges here, said had this year produced gardens that would have been in the running for gold medals at Chelsea.

Designed on the theme of “Gardens for world peace,” Chong fought off competition from 11 other designers from around the world to take a gold medal and the top award for his work, titled “Eye to Eye,” at the Huis Ten Bosch theme park in Nagasaki, southern Japan.

Chong, who won a gold at last year’s event, as well as both the Best Design and Peace and Flowers awards, said he got his inspiration for this year’s garden at last year’s event.

“It came to me in a flash,” he told The Daily Telegraph. “The two eyes that are part of my design show that we can see eye to eye with other people and also that we need to see the world through other people’s eyes.

“If we can do that, then there should be a lot more peace in the world,” he said.

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British designer James Basson, who was representing France, where he lives, said he felt “great relief” at his gold medal and the Peace and Flowers Award for his design, “Dulce at Decorum est,” which drew on the poem by the Latin poet Horace and was used, arguably more famously, by the British poet Wilfred Owen in World War I.

The phrase - which literally means “How sweet and fitting” - is marked on the three layers of concrete slab walls that have been pierced by a missile, a concept taken from an apartment in Gaza.

“It’s an image of three rooms that have been blasted through and is symbolic of the idea that in this damaged space, nature can return and make something beautiful, beautiful enough for people to come back to,” he said.

Gold medals were also awarded to Xanthe White, the New Zealand designer, for her work “Regenerating through water, a garden for world Peace”; Kazuyuki Ishihara - who took the Best in Show for Artisan Gardens at Chelsea this year - for “An Alcove Garden” and Hiroshi Terashita.

Bob Sweet, who helped to judge the first Gardening World Cup two years ago, said the event has made huge strides in a very short space of time.

I’m absolutely delighted at the improvement in the standards this year,” he told The Telegraph. “They have moved on massively in two years.

“As with any event, it takes time for these things to settle, but between 2010 and 2012 they have definitely reached the top end of the gardens we have at the gold medal standard,” he said.

“These gardens would certainly compete for gold medals at Chelsea or anywhere else.”